E.J. Montini began writing news columns for The Arizona Republic shortly before the first governor in state history was impeached, continued doing so as another governor was indicted and resigned, and has carried on over 25 years through out-of-control urban sprawl, unchecked illegal immigration, increasing daily temperatures, decreasing rainfall and recession. Coincidence?

Remembering Challenger

Twenty-seven years ago today I spent the better part of the afternoon and evening doing what everyone in America was doing.

We watched, over and over and over again, television replays of space shuttle Challenger exploding one minute and 15 seconds after liftoff, killing seven astronauts, including teacher Christa McAuliffe.

It was my first month as a news columnist.

For the next day’s paper I wrote in part:

“At times like these a journalist learns the terrible truth of writing. He finds himself wishing the written word was enough, that it might earn its keep as a conveyor of wisdom or sympathy or support, only to discover there is nothing in the language up to the task. Or perhaps it is a failing of writers, of this writer.”

In addition to McAuliffe, the other astronauts who died that day were Ellison Onizuka, Mike Smith, Dick Scobee, Greg Jarvis, Ron McNair and Judith Resnik.

I don’t know how many disasters, large and small, there have been since then.

Too many.

I’ve written about a lot of them, and each time learned again the terrible truth about writing I first learned in 1986.

The way I ended the column on the Challenger disaster could be the ending to every column I’ve done about every other unbearable tragedy. It was:

Damn.

Damn.

Damn.

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